Anyway, you’ve found your way to this blog post because your plans for this Halloween include a couch and cinematic entertainment, not super grody pub crawls or begging for candy or leaving your house. I love Halloween, but I’ve indulged in the time-honored tradition of movie-couching this lovely holiday since I was but a wee, cynical tween. When I was in 6th grade, I dressed up like Fairuza Balk from The Craft, but instead of joining my little brother in trick-or-treating I stayed home alone, watching Halloween movies and grumpily handing out candy. It was awesome, and it’s a tradition I’ve more or less honored every year since, with the exceptions of college Halloween party shitshows THAT DO NOT BEAR MENTIONING.

So, who better than me to guide you through the sometimes-depressing, mostly fun experience of the Halloween Movie Marathon? Let me be the Gothy-Tween-Virgil to your Zombie-Dante.

Rule #1: Dress up.

I don’t care if you’re alone, if you’re movie-marathoning because you weren’t invited anywhere, if LITERALLY NO ONE will be seeing your costume but you. Dressing up will make you feel better and set the appropriate mood for the movie marathon. If you don’t dress up, then it’s just a horror movie marathon, and you can have those year round. And, if your costume is particularly cool and/or adorable and/or hilariously awful, you can share it with all your social media friends. See, in the internet age, you’re NEVER ALONE.

Rule #2: Lights out or GTFO.

What do you mean, you’ll get scared if you do this movie marathon in the dark? Letting yourself get scared is essential to this cinematic experience. To allow yourself to be frightened by these movies is to momentarily loosen your grip on reality, to pack away your ever-present cynicism and, for just a moment, to believe in magic. Super creepy blood magic.

Rule #3: Refreshments.

I’m not going to dictate that you have popcorn balls and candy corn at your viewing (ALTHOUGH IF YOU INVITE ME, YOU FUCKING BETTER). I will recommend you have your favorite seasonal treat available in abundance. Pumpkin ale? Sure. BooBerry cereal? Also fine. And if you dislike most seasonal snacks, nibble what you like. The upside of intentionally discomforting yourself with horror movies is that you get to stuff your face with comfort food.

Rule #4: Keep social networking to a minimum, unless you’re doing more sharing than consuming.

For a couple of reasons: A) Parties and pub crawls always look way more fun on Instagram than they actually are, so if you’re movie-marathoning alone, it might bum you out. But no fear! Just don’t look at other people’s stuff. Post your own. You’re having way more fun, I promise. And B) If you’re doing this movie marathoning as a group, it’s super distracting for one person to be on their phone all night just browsing Tumblr. C’mon, don’t be rude.

Rule #5: Alternate between Hardcore Horror and Horror Comedies

Consider this system a palate cleanser. Scary movies will be scarier after a comedy, comedies will be funnier after watching someone saw off their own hand.

The week before Halloween is probably as good a time as any to meditate on my persistent dread and resulting anxiety.

Boo.

[Note: I’m aware of how unoriginal blogging about your anxiety is. “Oh, really, your entire generation was conditioned to primarily interact online and now you worry about socializing at parties? Whoa, no way.” Bear with me, Condescending Wonka.]

I worry like it’s my fucking job. In college, I created an emergency protocol in case a terrorist or wayward gunman accessed the dorm and I made my roommate do emergency drills with me (my “protocol” was mostly to lock the dorm room, hide in the closet and hold a clothes hanger, ready to poke the attacker in the face if they opened the door).

My anxiety, driven as it is by an illogical and ceaseless dread, persists even in my most joyful moments. I am, at present, more romantically fulfilled than I’ve ever been. My boyfriend is stupid-handsome, smart, kind, hilarious, talented and incredibly vocal about how awesome I am. And sometimes I shoot him sidelong glances, suspicious of his perfection, ready to find out he is a robot made of anthrax who was programmed to sell me magazine subscriptions and this whole relationship is a long con.

Jean-Claude Van Damme because there are no pictures of magazine selling anthrax robots (elusive creatures)

So, I’ve had this weird dynamic with horror movies in part because of my big sack o’ dread. You would think that subjecting an anxious person to an experience designed to incite panic (at the disco!) would be a terrible idea and, yes, it’s what made watching scary movies unbearable for so long. Sitting through the tensest moments of a horror movie is still really difficult for me, but I’ve begun to enjoy the experience due in large part to how these movies conclude. All of the tension gets resolved, providing me with a catharsis rivaled only by sex. The protagonist has been subjected to the worst possible scenario and usually (with some notable exceptions) survives.

I love this part of the movie. I spend so much time anticipating horrible events that don’t happen. I wait for the other shoe to drop and it doesn’t. Usually there is no other shoe. I’m preparing for the worst and, luckily, it never happens. But my dread persists because I’m still waiting for my boyfriend to explode into mustard gas or for the murderer to steal my clothes hanger. In horror movies, the worst thing happens, the emergency protocol goes into place and, most of the time, it works. People survive (not sexually active people, but some people) and you know they’re eventually going to be okay (sequels notwithstanding).

So, in honor of my favorite part of the horror movie, I’ve created a list of the best horror movie endings. This post is so very full of spoilers. Duh.

I consider this remake an improvement on the original. That’s not as blasphemous a statement as it sounds—while the original franchise (Evil Dead, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness) is beloved, the first film is the worst of the bunch and features no chainsaw arms.

Anyway, the entire final sequence of the remake is fantastic. The audience is introduced to Mia, our “final girl,” at her most vulnerable, when she’s coming to terms with her drug addiction. We end with her literally conquering her demons. And by “conquer” I mean she saws a demon’s head in half with a chainsaw and walks away like a bad ass in bleeding rain while a cabin burns to the ground behind her.

The day will come when I get tired of writing about Vamp, but that day is not today. Have you seen this movie yet? Do it, silly. Grace Jones’s ashy corpse giving the finger to the surviving protagonist is the em-effing best.